


Stop It

by RichieIsABastardMan



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Angst, F/M, Fluff, Intimacy, Kissing, Mutual Pining, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-02
Updated: 2020-05-02
Packaged: 2021-03-02 01:07:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,984
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23956612
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RichieIsABastardMan/pseuds/RichieIsABastardMan
Summary: You had been travelling with The Doctor since his ninth face, and been in love with him just as long. After the loss of Rose, your friend and The Doctor's companion, The Doctor took on Martha Jones as a co-companion. When you see her pining after The Doctor so hopefully, you try to put a stop to it, for the sake of her heart and yours.
Relationships: Tenth Doctor & Reader, Tenth Doctor/Reader, The Doctor (Doctor Who)/Reader
Comments: 4
Kudos: 105





	Stop It

“Stop it” you said, staring at the aloof Doctor as he played with his toggles. The Tardis’ toggles that is.

Having returned from your adventures in the Andromeda galaxy, Martha had decided to go rest, the day’s activities proving too much. The Doctor had sent her away with a smile, and she had hovered within the console room for a moment, perhaps lost and distracted by that smile, before sending a curt smile your way and leaving for the TARDIS’ hallways.

“What?” he asked absentmindedly, raising an eyebrow as he finally looked over at you.

“Stop leading her on”

You had been through this. The heart break of loving such an extraordinary being and finding no love in return. Well not no love, just a different sort of love. A platonic love. A lovely love none the less, but not the type you wished for. You had dealt with that (in an unbelievably unhealthy way but that’s neither here nor there) and you were over it.

You were over him.

But you refused to let Martha go through the heartbreak you had to endure.

“Leading who on?”. He was playing dumb. Not a good look for The Doctor. Though you could tell he knew what you had meant by how he avoided your gaze, fiddling around with the console. You had flown around with him enough to know that he wasn’t really doing anything with it, just distracting himself.

You rolled your eyes at his childishness and deciding to indulge in your own kind. “The TARDIS. Playing around with her bits like that and not even buying her a drink first, shameful really, Doctor”

He grinned at you then, his tongue poking out between his teeth for a moment before his gaze was off of you once again and back on the controls of his beloved TARDIS. “Oh we’ve had many drinks together me and her, don’t you worry”.

The silence hung around the two of you then. You had only felt such a heavy silence with the man twice before. Both of you could hear the words yet unsaid floating between you, taunting and teasing (but The Doctor was always good at that, wasn’t he?)

“I was talking about Martha” you replied finally, leaning your hip against the console lightly and staring at the tall man.

“I know”.

“Then why didn’t you reply properly?”.

“Because it wasn’t a statement worth replying to properly ”.

And there was the nastiness that crept up on him every so often. It would poke its head out from behind him and would try to bite your tongue from your mouth (in a very non-sexy way, to be clear). The Doctor had been alive for so long he surely had enough practice with verbal quips that shut down a conversation in seconds. But the malice in his voice when he engaged in such an act was so rarely heard by his companions that when it did appear it was, to put it plainly, scary.

You were used to it now. You had had your fair share of experience with it. When he lost Rose, it was as if any little thing you did was now subject to scrutiny. He had only calmed after you finally had enough and threatened to leave, to go back home and never see him again. That had hurt him. You had hurt him. And part of you felt proud for it because finally someone stood up to The Doctor in his moment of malice and it was you. But when his eyes had begun to water, you had felt bad again. You had felt evil and unlike yourself and so you had held him. He had rested his face within the junction of your neck and shoulder, lost within your hair. He had held you tightly around your waist, pulling you closer and closer to him. And for a moment all the work you had done to stop loving the man had returned with no complaint from you, no sir. The moment had been far too intimate to be just a moment between friends. But every moment felt like that with The Doctor, didn’t it? The fleeting touches, the hand holding, the hand resting gently on the small of your back, the hugging. All of it so intimate.

Yet, the next day after this moment with The Doctor, it was as if nothing had happened. He had busied himself with the TARDIS and finding somewhere new to jet off to. You had mourned for your hope the day before and then moved on, as it was all you could do.

“She really likes you” you say, parting yourself from the memory in which you had been lost in for a moment.

“I like her too” he replies. You wished he would just look at you.

“Not the way she likes you. She adores you. She thinks the sun shines out of your arse”.

“Oi” he finally turned to you “watch it”.

“You know its true though, don’t you Doctor”.

“How do you know all this then, huh? You got psychic powers or something you haven’t informed me about?”.

_Because I’ve been in her place, Doctor. I know how it feels. It hurts. Not in the way poets describe it. It doesn’t feel like your heart being ripped out of your chest. It feels your heart… it was never even there. You forget what having a heart feels like. But you mourn for it. And that’s the pain. I don’t want her to feel like that._

Instead, beyond any judgement of your own and perhaps as an act of fate (or malice sent straight from Hades) you replied, “Because I love you too”.

The moment the words left your mouth your eyes widened and your jaw dropped, as though it wasn’t even you who had revealed such a secret directly to the man it was about. The subconscious had become conscious. Surely there were defence mechanisms to stop this kind of behaviour in its tracks. “Damn you, Freud” you mumbled.

The doctor stared at you, his eyes squeezed together in confusion. “What?” he whispered.

“I was thinking about defence mechanisms” you replied quietly, looking at him. He was finally looking straight back at you. You wished he would stare at the console once again, maybe flick a few switches, anything to get his eyes (wide and soft in their gaze) off you.

“What?” the Doctor replied again, shaking his head. “No not the Freud thing, the thing before it”.

 _Might as well stick to my guns_ you thought. “I love you too?” you replied, though it released from your mouth as a question.

“Since when!?” he exasperated.

“Since your last face” you replied. You sounded guilty. Why did you sound guilty? Was it the feeling of the words left unspoken between the two of you? Or was it simply the elephant in the room? 

Rose.

By any other name she would have caused just as much tension.

He had loved Rose in a way you were sure he would never love you.

He hadn’t stopped staring at you, his jaw tight and his eyes, to you, appeared full of pity.

“Stop staring at me” you said, staring right back at him.

“Why didn’t you-“ he started but stopped himself, answering his own question within his mind. He knew why and suddenly he felt guilty too.

He began to move towards you and you froze where you stood, confused by his actions. You raised your eyes to meet his as he hovered above you. He leaned down to place his forehead gently against your own and shut his eyes gently. You did the same.

 _Here was the intimacy again_ , you thought, _here are the fleeting touches that we will never talk about again._

But you didn’t stop him. How could you, when his hands moved to rest softly upon your jaw and neck, and you could hear him breathing, heavy and deep.

And then you felt his lips upon yours and you froze. He continued to kiss you, and you reciprocated, kissing his soft lips gently, both of your eyes still shut.

You pushed him away gently, opening your eyes to his face, sullen and confused. His eyes shined in the light of the console room, and you hoped dearly the wetness there was a trick of the lights.

“We can’t do this to Martha” you practically whispered.

You watched him clench his jaw, his sad gaze never leaving your own. “This isn’t about her, is it?”.

You felt a fire and heaviness within your chest at his words, accusatory and all-knowing, but it died when you replied “We can’t do this to Rose”.

And that was the kicker wasn’t it? Whilst you had always felt The Doctor would not love you as much as Rose, you had only really felt that way after she was gone. When you had travelled with the two of them, The Doctor surely treated you as romantic interest equals, flirting and teasing. At first you thought that maybe that was just The Doctor, or maybe that was just who his new, tenth version was like. But his actions proved just a little bit too loving, just a little bit too intimate for it to be the case.

The Doctor had loved Rose. The Doctor had loved you. He had just loved you a little more privately.

Sure, Rose was smart enough to probably know there was some tension between the two of you, yet she had never mentioned it. And then when she was gone, all the feelings of schoolgirl excitement in getting attention from The Doctor became guilt. All his touches that once cause a tingling within your skin and stomach now almost made you ill with regret of things that hadn’t even had the chance to happen.

“Rose loved you” he said, ripping you away from your thoughts. Your guilt.

“Not like she loved you” you smiled.

“Does that mean we can’t love each other?” he asked, though you knew it was rhetorical. “Has she claimed me so that I can’t love anyone else? I have to mourn my love for her for the rest of my life?”

You laughed sadly at that.

“If that’s the case, is it not enough for me to mourn my love of her? Why do you have to do it to?” he continued.

You looked up at him then from behind tears you hadn’t realised had began to form within your eyes. He moved towards you again slowly. He traced his hands down your arms lightly and took your hands in his own. His hands were so soft, you noted, something rare for a man. Though he wasn’t a man, was he? You supposed you should remind yourself of that more often.

The face that stared at you now with tired, red-brimmed eyes would someday be the face of another. The hands that held yours would someday change shape and size and softness. The lips that kissed the skin of your hands now would be a slightly different shape and fullness. The man that pulled you towards him lightly and held your waist tightly against him would someday be another man. And then another man. And then another man. And maybe one day a woman.

And somehow you didn’t mind. Somehow, as he leaned down to place his lips upon yours again, firmly but with so much love, you realised you would not mind at all. Because it would still be _him._

You broke away from him again but this time much softer, as he still held you within his arms, hands tightly around you. You stared up at him and smiled and he returned with a grin, wide and cheeky as it always was.

“You can’t keep leading her on” you warned once again, and he nodded his head.

“I won’t”.


End file.
